KGB Bar

Lit Journal Contributors

Benjamin Carter Olcott

Benjamin Carter Olcott is an Editor at KGB Bar Lit Magazine and a proud Manhattan resident. His fiction has twice finaled in Glimmer Train Story Contests. He is an Editorial and Digital Products Assistant at Oxford University Press and works part-time at 192 Books in Chelsea.

Jenessa Abrams

Jenessa Abrams is an MFA candidate in fiction and literary translation at Columbia University. She studied creative writing and child and adolescent mental health at New York University. Her fiction has been published in Bluestockings Magazine and The Grief Diaries. A short film, which she wrote and produced, was selected for the Cannes Short Film Corner in 2013. She lives in New York, where she’s at work on a short story collection.

Susan Agar

Susan Agar recently moved to New York from Philadelphia, where she taught a grief writing workshop and was the Program Coordinator of Musehouse: A Center for the Literary Arts in Chestnut Hill. She has an M.A. in English Literature from London University, and an A.B. from Sarah Lawrence College.

Mimoza Ahmeti

Mimoza Ahmeti | wiki | was born in Kruja, Albania. She is the author of books of poems, Be Beautiful, Especially Tomorrow, Delirium and The Pollination of Flowers. She is the author of the novels The Architrave and The Hallucinating Woman. The Ridiculous Common Link, a collection of short stories, was published in Albania on 1996. She is married and has two daughters.

Chelsea Allison

Chelsea Allison graduated from Duke University with a BA in English and a certificate in Policy Journalism & Media Studies. After a year-long stint in investment banking, she now works in magazine publishing in New York.

Anna Andrade

Anna K. Andrade, translator and fiction writer, was born in Brazil and moved to New York City in 2000 to attend City College in order to obtain a master’s degree in creative writing. She has had short stories published both in Portuguese and English, the most recent being “A Daughter’s Secret” in the fiction anthology Coloring Book . She currently teaches intensive writing at Borough of Manhattan Community College, and The College of New Rochelle.

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Dave Barrett

Dave Barrett lives and writes out of Missoula, Montana. His fiction has appeared most recently in the Potomac Review, Prole 13 (U.K.), Midwestern Gothic and The MacGuffin. He teaches writing at Missoula College and is at work on a new novel.

Ester Bloom

Brooklyn-based writer Ester Bloom’s features, essays, and stories have appeared in Slate, Salon, Bite: An Anthology of Flash Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction, the Hairpin, the Awl, the Toast, the Morning News, Nerve, PANK, and numerous other venues. She blogs on culture for the Huffington Post and is a columnist at the Billfold and Lilith — for which she also writes the advice column Aunt Acid. Follow her @shorterstory.

Jon Boulier

Jon Boulier is a writer, photographer, and an instructor at the University of San Francisco. He’s contributed to Opium Magazine, Block, and The Rumpus. As a photographer, he’s shot regularly for How I Learned, the Franklin Park reading series, and The Monthly Rumpus. He’s currently at work on a novel and a collection of short stories.

Kelly Braffet

Kelly Braffet‘s first novel, Josie and Jack, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2005. It was praised as “wicked fun . . . a gothic tour of hell” (Los Angeles Times) and “a compelling study of love, hate, and psychopathic jealousy” (New York Post). Braffet was born in Long Beach, California, in 1976, and has lived in Arizona, rural Pennsylvania and Oxford, England. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University, and has taught novel writing at the Sackett Street Writing Workshop. She currently resides in Brooklyn, NY with her fiance, the tall and embarrassingly talented writer Owen King. They have three cats.

Kate Braverman

Kate Braverman is an experimental writer of a singular and ruthless breed. She is a poet, short fiction writer, essayist and author of the novels, Lithium for Medea, Palm Latitudes, Wonders of the West, and The Incantation of Frida K. Her Graywolf Prize winning memoir, Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles: An Accidental Memoir was published in Feb. 2006. Kate also recently won the 2005 Mississippi Review Prize and received a Christopher Isherwood Foundation Fellowship for lifetime recognition of achievement. Kate’s short-story “Mrs. Jordan’s Summer Vacation” won Editor’s Choice Raymond Carver Short-Story Award.

Ken Bruen

Ken Bruen, born in Galway, Ireland, is the author of more than a dozen extremely dark crime novels. His book The Guards, which began the Jack Taylor series, was nominated for every single award in the mystery field, and won the Shamus Award. Mr. Bruen has a PhD in metaphysics and taught for 25 years in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia.

David Burr Gerrard

David Burr Gerrard is a writer living in New York. His debut novel, Short Century, will be published by Rare Bird Books in 2014. A graduate of Columbia’s M.F.A program in fiction, he is a contributing editor at Tottenville Review, and his short fiction has appeared in Extract(s).

Susan Buttenwieser

Susan’s fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appeared in Failbetter, Epiphany, Ducts and other publications. She has received several fiction fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and teaches writing in organizations that serve at-risk populations including the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility and Rikers Island.

Juan Carlos Reyes

Juan Carlos Reyes is originally from Guayaquil, Ecuador. In 2007, he received a PEN USA Emerging Voices Rosenthal Fellowship, and his stories, poems and essays have appeared in Arcadia, Black Warrior Review, Blue Stem and The Busy Signal. He holds a Mathematics degree from New York University, and he currently teaches creative writing, literature, and composition at The University of Alabama. He’s recently finished work on his first novel, A Summer’s Lynching.

Jane Ciabattari

Jane Ciabattari is the author of the short-story collection, "Stealing the Fire." Her short stories have been published in VerbSap.com, LiteraryMama.com, Ms., The North American Review, Denver Quarterly, Hampton Shorts (which honored her with an Editors' Choice STUBBY Award), The East Hampton Star, and Redbook, which nominated her story "Gridlock" for a National Magazine Award. Her story “Payback Time" was a Pushcart Prize "special mention." Her story "How I Left Onandaga County," appears in the anthology "The Best Underground Fiction" (November 2006,Stolen Time Press) and also was a Pushcart Prize honorable mention. She serves as vice president/ADD THIS:membership of the National Book Critics Circle and a blogger on the NBCC board blog, Critical Mass. The North American Review, Denver Quarterly, Hampton Shorts (which honored her with an Editors' Choice STUBBY Award). www.janeciabattari.com

John J. Clayton

John J. Clayton’s third novel, Kuperman’s Fire, was published in July, 2007. His Wrestling with Angels: New and Collected Stories, was published by Toby Press in September, 2007. His stories have won prizes in O.Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, and in the Pushcart Prize anthology. His second collection, Radiance, was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in 1998. His second novel, The Man I Never Wanted to Be, was also published in 1998.

Clayton has edited six editions of an anthology, the Heath Introduction to Fiction (now for Hough-ton Mifflin). He has also written a good deal about modern fiction, including Gestures of Healing, a psychological study of modern British and American fiction. His Saul Bellow: In Defense of Man won awards in literary criticism. He has published criticism on various twentieth century writers including D. H. Lawrence, E. L. Doctorow, and Grace Paley.

T Cooper

T Cooper is the author of the novels Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes (Dutton, March 2006) and Some of the Parts (Akashic, 2002). T is also co-editor (with Adam Mansbach) of an anthology of original fiction, entitled A Fictional History of the United States With Huge Chunks Missing (Akashic, 2006), from which “The Story That Refuses to Die” is excerpted. T’s work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The New York Times, The New York Times Style Magazine, The Believer, and Poets & Writers, in addition to a handful of anthologies. T lives in New York City.

Tod Crouch

Tod Crouch is author of the novels The Night Watchman, Common People, Romanticide, Victors, Cutting Teeth and The Anna Log Children’s Series. He received a Bachelor’s Degree from Columbia College for Photography in 2001 after directing and writing two theatrical productions, Undying Loyalty and Of course: a Series of One Acts. before finishing five other plays. He Co-Curates at Papa B’s Studio in Brooklyn and occasionally volunteers for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. He makes most of his money as a bouncer in a lesbian bar. Tod tends to be a cheery lad. If you were to be Tod’s friend, he would want you to know that he’ll talk to anyone about anything anytime, but will probably forget your name and hates answering phones. The book he wish he wrote is Herman Hesse’s “The Glass Bead Game”. His favorite word is “surprise”. His least favorite word is “but”. He wants to be remembered as “a neat guy to meet.” His six word epitaph is “He had an amazing run, thankfully.” He is from Illinois and has lived in New York for five years.

Allison Leigh DeFrees

Allison Leigh DeFrees is a poet and an immigration attorney living in New York City and Austin, Texas. Her past includes stints as a playwright, actor, and punk rock singer. Former jobs include bread delivery woman, horse stall cleaner, waitress, wooden boat renovator, medical malpractice lawyer, Calculus tutor, journalist, and speech writer. She likes poetry best, and in 2005 published a handbound volume of poetry, “Glass Bones.” She still carries a torch for mathematics.

Mike Dell’Aquila

Mike Dell’Aquila received a BA in English from Penn State University
and an MA in English from Brooklyn College. His writing has appeared in a
variety of print and online publications including Writing Our Way Home
(forthcoming), Paterson Literary Review, VIA: Voices in Italian Americana,
Florida English Literary Journal, Italian Americana, and Kalliope: A Penn
State Literary Journal. Mike also maintains a blog at
http://mikedellaquila.blogspot.com and is currently at work on his first
novel.

Yutaka Dirks

Yutaka Dirks is a writer who divides his time between New York and Toronto, Canada. His fiction and essays have appeared in magazines and journals including The Sun Magazine, THIS Magazine, Over My Dead Body, and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. He can be found at: yutakadirks.com and @yutakadirks

Rebecca Donner

Rebecca Donner is the author of the novel Sunset Terrace, and the editor of the story collection On The Rocks: The KGB Bar Fiction Anthology. Her book reviews and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including Bookforum, The Believer, People Magazine, and Post Road. She has taught creative writing at Wesleyan, Barnard and Cooper Union, and is presently working on her second novel. Visit Rebecca at RebeccaDonner.com.

Adam Eaglin

Adam Eaglin holds degrees in literature and writing from Duke University and Boston University. His writing has appeared in Words Without Borders, Harvard Review, Publishers Weekly, TheAtlantic.com, and VanityFair.com, among others. He works in book publishing in New York.

Maya Eilam

Maya Eilam graduated from The College of New Jersey with a BA in English Literature and Women’s and Gender Studies. She takes a loose phenomenological approach to literature and focuses on engaged reading with discerning reflection.

Scott D. Elingburg

Scott D. Elingburg is software analyst and freelance writer. His work has appeared in the South Carolina Review, the Southeast Review, Wide Awake Press Anthologies, MetroBeat (formerly Creative Loafing), Charleston Style and Design, and several other publications. Currently he is the reviews editor and regular contributor at the pop culture website, Stereo Subversion and frequent contributor to PopMatters. He’s not much of a fisherman, but he does live in Charleston, SC with his wife, daughter, and cat.

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Jason Price Everett

Jason Price Everett was born in Orlando, Florida in 1972. He was educated at Lafayette College, Cornell University and the University of Paris. He has held twenty-six different positions of employment to date, one of the more recent being that of English professor at a university in Xian, China. He is the author of Unfictions, a collection of short prose available from 8th House Publishing. His work has appeared in such diverse publications as Si Senor, Hubris, CRIT Journal, The Mad Hatters’ Review, BITEmagazine, Writers Notes Magazine, Farmhouse Magazine, The Quarterly Review, The Prague Literary Review, City Writers Review, Riverbabble, Underground Voices, BLATT, The Alchemy Review and Revue Mètropolitaine. He currently lives in Montreal.

Eric Felipe-Barkin

Eric Felipe-Barkin is a working filmmaker, writer, illustrator and published translator. He holds an M.F.A. from Columbia University’s fiction program and regularly staffs the sundry camera departments of New York City’s commercial film industry. He is currently at work on no less than twenty western short films, a Sunday comic series based on the work of Winsor McKay and something else by the time you read this.

Steve Geng

Steve Geng grew up an army brat in Philadelphia, Germany, and France. An irrepressible romantic, he’s been (among other things) a career thief, an actor on the TV show Miami Vice, and finally a dedicated member of Manhattan’s twelve-step recovery community. He concedes his love of writing to be a legacy from his sister, the late New Yorker humorist, Veronica Geng. His affinity for storytelling produced two screenplays and, as a student at NYU, a novel, Bop City, set in Paris during the Algerian revolution. Thick As Thieves is his first published book. He lives and writes in Manhattan.

Heather Green

Heather Green’s two poetry chapbooks, No Omen and The Match Array, were published in 2010 by LATR Press and Dancing Girl Press, respectively. A few of her translations and original poems are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly and Barrelhouse.

Frank Haberle

Frank Haberle won the 2011 Pen Parentis Award for his short story South of Hartford; his other stories have appeared in numerous print and online magazines. Frank is a grantwriter working with New York City social service organizations. He is a Board member and workshop leader for the NY Writers Coalition, a nonprofit group developing writing communities in prisons, youth centers, senior centers and social service programs throughout New York City.

Kait Heacock

Kait Heacock is a fiction writer originating from Washington State. She recently relocated to Brooklyn to focus on a career in publishing and writing. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals and websites including Portland Review, Tin House‘s Open Bar blog, and Housefire. Her short story ”Upstairs,” published by Vol. 1 Brooklyn, was chosen by The Atlantic Cities as a “2013 Best of City Reads” and will be reprinted in the April 2014 issue of Esquire Russia. Her website is kaitgetslit.com.